Finance Committee on Oct. 26th, 2011

[Pierre Gratton]

If you look at our brief, we're not asking for any economic help from the government. Our companies don't need subsidies. We have $137 billion in investment that we're prepared to start spending now.

The moneys we do want are simply to enable that to happen by having an efficient and timely program.

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

I think one of the things you raised in your briefs was you were talking about the problems of getting employment matches. The boomers are going to be retiring. Ms. Sanchez was talking about bridging our Canadian schoolchildren of today into the jobs of the future, and those kinds of things.

I was a school board trustee in Hamilton. We had a 28% dropout rate because we were streaming everybody toward university and nobody toward blue collar jobs. Guess where we've got the real problem?

[Pierre Gratton]

There was a decision by the government this year to terminate the sector council program. It's winding down by 2013. To be honest, this is not something we're all that happy about.

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Send them a letter.

[Pierre Gratton]

In the mining industry we have one of the most active and most successful sector councils. Part of the work the mining industry has done is to go into areas like the automotive industry and try to find workers there who could transition into mining.

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

We did the same thing with steelworkers in Hamilton.

[Pierre Gratton]

We are concerned about the termination of this program. We're hopeful that our particular council will be able to continue through our own efforts and some program funding will still be available under the new system.

We have nice things to say about a number of the decisions the government makes, but some decisions it made we didn't like and this is one of them.

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

I think in fairness to all of us, things should be laid on the table. It's important that if this is needed, then people need to hear it.

Thanks.

[Pierre Gratton]

Karina also mentioned that the investment in training for first nations is important, and a really important source of workers for our industry.

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

And people don't have to leave their communities.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you, Mr. Marston.

We'll go to Mr. Van Kesteren, please.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you all for this invitation. I don't know, though, we might be sticking around here for a little while.

I want to tell you that I got a call from my brother-in-law. He lives in Smithers, just a little ways down the road. He saw on Facebook that I was going to be here. I asked him about the port. He pretty much reiterated what you said, and that is that this has been a great boon to the economy.

I want to talk a little bit in defence of Mr. Brison. He's absolutely right. He is a free trader, but it befuddles me when he starts talking about carbon tax. I'm going to give you my take, if you'll bear with me a little while.

This is a great example. Ontario has a green energy program that has introduced wind turbines, and nobody would be against that. But a number of years back--we don't have to go back too far--Ontario was an exporter of energy, and today we have become an importer of energy. Here's the problem. The wind's blowing at nighttime when nobody uses the stuff, and in the daytime, when we need it, the wind quits blowing. So what we do is sell the energy at a loss, or I think at 2¢ a kilowatt, to Quebec and they dam up the dams and open them up in the daytime and sell it back to us for 9¢ or 10¢ during the day at the peak times. So it has disrupted our grid.

Again, we'd all love to see a perfectly green environment, but I look at a country like China, and God bless them, they're doing wonderfully. But Mr. Brison and I, when we went there--and I talked about this at the last meeting too--the air was thick with coal. They're buying your coal and they're running it through the port here and producing energy at 3¢ or 4¢ a kilowatt.

The result in Ontario is that our manufacturing has been totally dissipated. I'm not saying that's the only reason, but it certainly is a major cost. The fact that we can no longer compete in one of the areas, and one of the last areas in which we were competitive was in energy, is indefensible. And the Chinese have told us that they're not interested in any of those projects you're talking about, any of those green....They look at us as being the polluters for the last 200 years, and they've got a long way to go before they catch up.

How do you balance that? Ms. Sanchez, you've made a wonderful request--and I don't think there's anybody here whose heart doesn't go out to our children--but when you talk about 1% of GDP when we are in a time where tax revenues are such that we're running a deficit and we're starting to load up our national debt to the effect that we're going to become a have-not, how do you balance that? I'm really looking for a balance. When I hear about carbon tax, that simply blows me away, because now not only have we disadvantaged ourselves in the marketplace with energy, we're now going to load something else on. How do you balance that? How do we become a generous nation, as Ms. Sanchez rightly pointed out, a rich nation that rather than take moneys from an economy that we saw four or five years ago, when there was a surplus and we could have these projects, to a situation now where we're hanging by a thread...? How can you advocate something like a carbon tax? I'm curious, especially with that kind of information.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Mr. Kariya, please.

[Paul Kariya]

First and foremost, I think it speaks of leadership. Carbon tax is a tool. There are other strategies that can be used. Cap and trade was mentioned. We need to chart a different course, and it's going to be--

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

Let me interrupt. Somebody mentioned that Australia tried that route, and today we're at an advantage where we can start to grow our mining because they've made themselves non-competitive.

[Paul Kariya]

But if we're not careful, we're mortgaging our children's future in terms of the environment and air quality.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

I suggest we're doing that now, by the fact that we're running huge deficits. We look at Europe, and Europe is in a meltdown position. I'm looking for answers.

[Paul Kariya]

You spoke of balance, Dave, and I think that's what we need. We can't mortgage the environment totally for the economic development of today. I don't think anybody in the mining sector is saying that, or any of the forward-thinking industrial sectors. We need to start to make those shifts, and that's what it is about.

The jobs that we speak of here, including my sector, can help provide for the social kinds of things that are referenced here. That's the balance that we need. And I think there is a green side of it as well as the traditional industrial side of it.

Could I also say that if Ontario is the example--

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

We're out of time. Very briefly, please.

[Paul Kariya]

If Ontario is the example of how to do the green sector, I'd say we have some concerns about that. I think they went too far in terms of overpricing with their FIT program. We didn't go that route in British Columbia.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Mr. Giguère has the floor. You have five minutes.

[Alain Giguère, NDP, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

My first question is for Mr. Kariya.

Okay, I'll speak French.

[Paul Kariya]

I got my Level B when I was a manager with the Government of Canada, a while back…

I don't know. It was 30 years ago.

[Alain Giguère, NDP, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Presently, the wood and paper industry in British Columbia has the financial capacity to make a change for new production--paper and...all at the same time.

[Paul Kariya]

The forest sector is going through a transition. There is still a good part of it with value-added products, dimension lumber and so forth. Many of the pulp and paper companies have gone into the grain energy sector using biomass. I think that's just a natural outgrowth of the sector, getting better value for the wood we have, including what we consider wood waste. So that is happening, yes.